Making Gravity Grade push outlay lips drink drift Resonance Sing Aloud Amphorae uneven, though I'm with Kent. I usually draw iterations of a single letter until I get whatever aspect of the thing I'm working on looking right, then move on. If I make coherent words, it's usually because I'm working quickly.

When messing around with pen and paper, I write nonsense that seems meaningful. My latest is ‘HAPTIC FEEDBACK and MORE’. Lots of potential for silly lettering. Otherwise when I explore potential for typeface ideas, I often write things like ‘garen’ and ‘argon’ and ‘Merz’.

If this is just for lettering fun that that's one thing but from the point of view of getting started on a font "adhesion" is good but so is Type Together's phrase "videospan". The reasons are the same. "magneto" is no good - for the same reason.

The reason is that you want shapes to play with that you really want letters that are good stand ins for the overall texture and which also do a good job of suggesting what the essential characteristics or "DNA" of the type will be. You also want letters that you can make a large number of test words with. In English an "e" is particularly ideal.

You don't want to repeat shapes more than you have to because it is inefficient. Hence if you have a d you don't need a bpq etc. Similarly if you have a n you don't need an m. You also don't want letters that tell you very little about the rest of the types face such as g in the double story version. It is a cul du sac design process within the font.

The great thing about "magneto" is that it has an an and e which are superficially similar because they have middle strokes but which must be treated so differently.

I think that a go to word seems less important than having an awareness of the relative utility of the letters you choose to your design process.

I like to use plinova because it has a diagonal letter (v), a round one (o), and a "rectangular" one (n), plus ascender and descender (p,l). With this letters you get the necessary info to develop almost all the others, except /s/t/z/f/. I prefer to draw those at the end of the process. I don't draw the /s/ in the beginning because it tells me too little about the rest of the words.

The first 'word' I usually produce is nihilim simply because those are the first letters I typically make. They repeat many shapes, so are easy to produce, and are good for quickly establishing weight, horizontal proportions and spacing norms. After that, I do the lowercase o, and test millioon, another good spacing word.

I understand why many designers like to use words that include some of the more 'expressive' letters such as lowercase a and g, and diagonal letters. But I reckon 90% of what makes a typeface work is in its stroke weights, proportions and spacing. I want to get those established first, and worry how to make the lowercase a charming later.

A good word for evaluating cyrillics is "фиброжелудка". You get "aeopy" for free (or get to draw a better 'у'), and many non-trivial cyrillic letters are included. "моветон" gives you four more letters to practice downscaling your capitals, and "минишпиц" is a good word to check if your typeface looks too much like a railroad track or a picket fence.

minimum is what I usually start with when I instruct my students on minuscule writing. UNIVERSITÄTSBIBLIOTHEK is what they learn to hate when we practise Capitalis.

In fonting my lowercase take-off is nuhm (nun, ihm, nur, minni…).Hamburgefonstiv or Hamburghepfonsity is always at hand, as well as daumenchor/Daumenchor or Rovenbaum. In the correction process I make use of EndumachtoligrypheApfendygarboscimuthDampfguldenchoristEmbaroughsteplicyChambourgentChordavimentusDrauchendiplomBuchstabengoldyHengoldyframpuschEndiquamorphyseAlberyndephromagintuWeihnachtsoratyriumZwölfte DaumenchorsymphonieDownton Abbey Roadand similar stuff.For viewing capitals I like e.g. ANCHORAGE, VANCOUVER, DYKUMAPHONIE, SYMPHONIEKONZERTABEND.

In order to view certain language-specific letter combinations I look atstauchverplützlischkeitungwhoughlythecouldinguishtybeauxondèraistonagenoîtousghiamoglichennondiscezzanieszczącyłytwyckiczyskiecadameiraquenhãmosadaçãoquestrasientechoiudadeñaciónuitelijkeendischaachtjeshoud.